You can’t invite everyone to the wedding…

Let’s just face it, you can’t invite everyone to the wedding. Deciding who makes it on the guest list is a tricky task that requires planning and careful attention to detail to ensure your wedding day is fun and unforgettable. No, inviting your aunt’s third cousin twice removed will not make your party more fun. Trust me.

Just as you would take the time to carefully select your wedding guest list, you should do the same for the audience you are trying to reach through your social marketing campaign. Segmentation is not a new concept, but it’s important step that can sometimes be overlooked.

What not to do…

Your social marketing campaign may be more effective if you focus your efforts on a segment of the population, rather than trying to appeal to the general population. Segmenting your audience will allow you to focus your resources and allow for a greater impact than trying to reach everyone. It will allow you to choose the portion of the population that are more reachable than others, and that may be more open to changing the behaviour of your campaign.

The most common segmentation strategies include geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioural segmentation.

Geographic: segmentation based on location

Demographic: segmentation based on vital statistics, such as age, gender, education, etc

Psychographic: segmentation based on attitudes, values, morals, political views etc.

There are a number of different strategies and resources out there to help you gather data and market information about your audience. Use your knowledge of the community, and look to previous campaigns that have successfully reached the audience you are targeting. There is a TON of information out there, and a lot of this work will most likely have already been done for you, it’s just a matter of finding it! The segmentation chapter of the Community Tool Box out of the University of Kansas is a great place to start learning more about segmentation and how to select the most worthwhile target audience for your campaign.

The process of segmenting your audience will likely uncover important details that can then be used to improve your campaign. Once this segmentation has occurred, define your target market and then begin building your campaign, and incorporating strategies your chosen audience can use to break down the perceived barriers to your chosen behaviour.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to segmenting your audience and honing in on the right people to target through your campaign. Join us in November as we dive deeper into audience segmentation, share some great examples of segmentation and share tips on how you can incorporate segmentation into your next social marketing campaign.

References:

Community Tool Box. (2013). Segmenting the market to reach the targeted population. Work Group for Community Help and Development: University of Kansas. Retrieved from – http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/sustain/social-marketing/reach-targeted-populations/main